The walking dead: Our ‘education’ system produces progressive zombies

In a case of near-perfect serendipity, two headlines from the world of public education broke this week.

One tells the story of how roughly two-thirds of eighth graders attending American public schools in 2017 were not proficient in reading or mathematics — and with even worse results for many urban districts — according to test results released by the U.S. Department of Education.

The other puts the spotlight on a school superintendent from New Jersey who was caught defecating in public after cameras were set up to catch whoever was leaving nasty land mines at the high school football and track facility “on a daily basis.”

Either way, that’s a whole lotta crap. Speaking of which, how about another pitch for more money to experiment on your kids, while sparsely delivering results that could actually be deemed worthy of being called an “education?” Oh, they get other results, all right. But they usually come in the aftermath of feeding kids a rich diet of propaganda, so that by eighth grade they are well on their way to being good little minions of the state who believe in everything and nothing at all. That’s what passes for making, wink-wink, “critical thinkers” these days. You are basically signing up to join a cult in many school districts, and that cult is progressivism.

There is another path to take, though, and it must be approached through the narrow gate. Former chaplain in the Army Reserve, current president of Frontline Ministries, and my friend, E. Ray Moore, says spiritual fitness is at least as important as math and reading scores if we are to return our education system to its former greatness. Or we can continue in a direction that will turn our children against us, when they become pawns of progressives as they’re paraded on camera to lobby government to strip our God-given rights.

“If we do not take care of the children and rebuild the culture via growing K-12 Christian education and home schooling, the new barbarians on our front porch will be our own children and grandchildren,” Moore told me. “It’s as if our culture is in a mass casualty situation with thousands wounded and dying on the ground. There are a limited number of doctors, nurses and medical resources to care for the emergency. In these moments we must learn to triage and care for those who can be saved. If we only fight the symptoms, we lose in the end.”

In essence, Moore is saying that even if our schools were producing fantastic results in math and science, there would still be a dreadful cancer in our midst. Our best and brightest, for example, are more educated than any generation that has ever gone before them in terms of access to both early education and advanced learning opportunities all along the way. But they are also the ones who go on to college where they imagine there are literally hundreds of genders, or burn their college campus to the ground because Ben Shapiro showed up and they just can’t even.

They are the walking dead, more aware of gender reassignment surgery and third-wave feminism than the Holocaust. So instead of once again falling for the banana in the tailpipe and believing we need to redouble our efforts in public education, maybe it’s time that the American church stop unequally yoking itself to this progressive bastion. The public schools are an entity that, per the regularly stated obsessions of the perpetually distracted National Education Association, hates just about everything orthodox Christianity professes.

“But Steve,” some of you will say, “theology has no place in our schools!”

Tell that to the progressives, because they’ve been teaching their theology in the schools for a generation now — and you paid for it. Nothing in this world that shapes our thinking is a morally neutral pursuit. It will always include the inculcation of values; it’s simply a matter of whose values are being inculcated.

And if you don’t believe your government-schooled children have been inculcated to the point of indoctrination, sit down with them and seriously discern what it is they truly believe and why. Then prepare to sit back and wince.